Mozilla's Firefox Web browser has made impressive market share gains in Europe over the past few years. In the latest marketshare report released by StatCounter, Firefox 3 has finally surpassed Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular browser in Europe in a breakdown by version number.

Firefox 3 holds 35 percent and IE 7 has 34 percent in that region. The recent decline of IE 7 in the past week can largely be attributed to the release of IE 8, Microsoft's new browser. According to StatCounter, IE 8 has grown to 2.3 percent in Europe, with most of those users upgrading from IE 7. This change was enough to put Firefox 3 on top. IE 6, however, still has 11 percent marketshare, which means that all users of Microsoft's browser across all versions still outnumber the total number of Firefox users.

"The move is partly explained by a small switch from IE 7.0 usage to IE 8.0 but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3.0," said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen in a statement. "The data shows that Firefox is closing the gap and is now just 10 percent behind all IE versions in Europe."

When all versions are considered, IE has higher market share than Firefox

StatCounter's total scores for Europe put IE marketshare at 48 percent and Firefox at 38 percent. Opera is listed as the next most popular browser in the region with 7 percent. Safari and Chrome both rank lower than 3 percent, according to StatCounter. StatCounter's total worldwide numbers show IE at 62 percent and Firefox at 29 percent. Worldwide, Opera, Chrome, and Safari all have less than 3 percent. The numbers for North America are roughly similar to the global scores, but put Safari at 5 percent and Opera at less than 1 percent.

Firefox market share has already exceeded Internet Explorer in several European countries. For example, Poland has Firefox at 51 percent and IE at 36 percent, followed by Opera at 10 percent. Opera has a very large presence in several European countries, such as Russia where it ranks higher than IE at 37 percent.

StatCounter also supplies statistics about mobile browser popularity. Opera and the iPhone browser are tied this week at 22 percent. The next most popular is Nokia's browser at 18 percent and then the iPod touch at 15 percent and Android at roughly 2 percent.

The mobile numbers are very different for North America, where the iPhone and iPod touch dominate and Opera barely has any presence at all. The situation is reversed in Asia, where Opera dominates on mobile devices at 45 percent and the iPhone has only 5 percent. With the emergence of Mozilla's Fennec project, it's likely that Mozilla will make an appearance on these charts within the next few years.

Obviously, the manner in which these market share statistics are collected is not entirely scientific. According to StatCounter, their numbers are based on aggregate data from their own network of users, which includes 3 million websites and 4 billion page views per month.

The extremely high popularity of Firefox in Europe raises some questions about the validity of the European Commission's ongoing investigation of Microsoft's browser bundling tactics. Microsoft's browser is clearly not intractably entrenched in Europe, and Mozilla's success in the region demonstrates that third-party browsers can gain a strong position in the market.

81 Reader Comments

The extremely high popularity of Firefox in Europe raises some questions about the validity of the European Commission's ongoing investigation of Microsoft's browser bundling tactics. Microsoft's browser is clearly not intractably entrenched in Europe, and Mozilla's success in the region demonstrates that third-party browsers can gain a strong position in the market.

Not really. It shows the high popularity of 1 version of IE to 1 version of Firefox. When total number of FF users meets or exceeds total number of IE users, then you can come to this conclusion.

A cynic would say that the EU jumping on the browser-bundling argument a full 10 years after the US DOJ has more to do with their seeing an opportunity to further line the EU coffers at the expense of a US company, rather than some noble goal of protecting consumers who are obviously smart enough to have made their own choices already.

Heck, even a naive optimist would probably see it that way, at this point.

The extremely high popularity of Firefox in Europe raises some questions about the validity of the European Commission's ongoing investigation of Microsoft's browser bundling tactics. Microsoft's browser is clearly not intractably entrenched in Europe, and Mozilla's success in the region demonstrates that third-party browsers can gain a strong position in the market.

Not really. It shows the high popularity of 1 version of IE to 1 version of Firefox. When total number of FF users meets or exceeds total number of IE users, then you can come to this conclusion.

Wait, so IE has to become number 2 to become unentrenched? How does that logic work? Doesn't your definition mean whoever is number one has an entrenched position no matter who/what it is? Get over yourself already. As the article noted, IE is already surpassed by other browsers in many EU countries. Heck, in Russia, it's got even lower market share than Opera!

Originally posted by Commander Thanatos:Not really. It shows the high popularity of 1 version of IE to 1 version of Firefox. When total number of FF users meets or exceeds total number of IE users, then you can come to this conclusion.

Firefox has well over one third of the European browser market. All versions of Internet Explorer together reach 48 percent, which means that Microsoft doesn't even have half of the browser market anymore. Do you seriously think that 48 percent marketshare represents an intractable monopoly that needs to be regulated by the government? If Firefox's current growth rate sustains, then it will be the dominant European browser within three years without any need for government intervention.

What if your standards were applied consistently to other technologies? In the web server market, Apache has 66 percent and the next highest is Microsoft with 18 percent. Do you think that the government should intervene to equalize that market? Maybe Linux server distributions should be required to unbundle and stop distributing Apache because it has an "unfair" advantage?

Internet Explorer's prior dominance has unquestionable been cripplingly destructive to the evolution of the Internet, but those days are very clearly at an end. You need to look beyond your justifiable dislike for Microsoft and recognize that the stakes are higher. If the EU takes regulatory action against Microsoft and forces them to remove IE from Windows, it's going to set an extremely dangerous precedent that will eventually pose a greater threat to free and open source software.

The extremely high popularity of Firefox in Europe raises some questions about the validity of the European Commission's ongoing investigation of Microsoft's browser bundling tactics. Microsoft's browser is clearly not intractably entrenched in Europe, and Mozilla's success in the region demonstrates that third-party browsers can gain a strong position in the market.

Not really. It shows the high popularity of 1 version of IE to 1 version of Firefox. When total number of FF users meets or exceeds total number of IE users, then you can come to this conclusion.

Wait, so IE has to become number 2 to become unentrenched? How does that logic work? Doesn't your definition mean whoever is number one has an entrenched position no matter who/what it is? Get over yourself already. As the article noted, IE is already surpassed by other browsers in many EU countries. Heck, in Russia, it's got even lower market share than Opera!

Well, I was going by the author's definition of entrenched. If someone puts forth a definition that we can all agree with, I'll be happy to use that.

Originally posted by Lemurs:A cynic would say that the EU jumping on the browser-bundling argument a full 10 years after the US DOJ has more to do with their seeing an opportunity to further line the EU coffers at the expense of a US company

EU has often gone after European companies that break the law. For example Volkswagen and ThyssenKrupp. But I guess it's not sexy to talk about those cases, since they don't arouse jingoistic feelings....

As to EU going after MS 10 years after DOJ did... Well, I don't see much changes in MS's behavior in that 10 years. They are still bundling the browser with the OS, after all.

I'll only be glad when MSIE 6 is eliminated totally. Half my web-development work consists of making work-arounds for MSIE 6. Supporting it is a demand that is always made by clients, but it is seriously hampering my development.

Originally posted by Lemurs:A cynic would say that the EU jumping on the browser-bundling argument a full 10 years after the US DOJ has more to do with their seeing an opportunity to further line the EU coffers at the expense of a US company, rather than some noble goal of protecting consumers who are obviously smart enough to have made their own choices already.

The EU is not going after MS ten years after the DOJ. The EU is just pissed of at MS, because the EU has ten years of investigation going against MS and MS is not complying with any of their demands.

Originally posted by Basquiat:Right when you can name a modern OS with 90% market share other than Windows.

What's an invalid comparison, and besides if computers where sold without a browser how would people go download Firefox (or any other browser)?

Should people have to use ftp.exe from the command line, but wait that competes with 3rd party ftp clients so that should be removed from Windows as well. And while you're at it how about removing Notepad & Wordpad since they compete with 3rd party text editors.

Where do you draw the line with included programs/utilities and why is the browser so special that it can't be included?

It has become pretty obvious that IE's grip on the browser market is slipping away and deservedly so, the browsers gaining market share now (Gecko & Webkit in their various shells) are competing on standards compliance and performance, not stupid gimmicks like the last "Browser War".

Originally posted by segphault:Firefox has well over one third of the European browser market. All versions of Internet Explorer together reach 48 percent, which means that Microsoft doesn't even have half of the browser market anymore. Do you seriously think that 48 percent marketshare represents an intractable monopoly that needs to be regulated by the government?

Even if Microsoft had 0.1% market share of the browser market, it would still be monopolizing the market [was Even if Microsoft has 0.1% market share, it is still monopolizing the market] .. up until (I hate to say this) Windows Vista. The fact that Microsoft did not take any steps to allow Microsoft Updates in a standard, cross-browser platform is enough for them to be bad.

Again, we are looking at posterity, not going forward and I (gasp!) praise Microsoft for unbundling Microsoft Update from Internet Explorer.

Originally posted by segphault:Can you name any modern operating system that doesn't bundle a web browser?

Its cool for them to bundle a browser. Its not cool for them to bundle a browser and REQUIRE people to use it or make it uninstallable using your huge market share in another market.

(I hope the fanboys agree by now that the browser market is separate from the OS market.)

Again, Microsoft is in a unique position and has to play by different rules than others given its overwhelming market share in another market (OS) which the EU suspects they are using to leverage their browser market share.

Oddly enough the shares vary wildly per countryGermany for example has a high Firefox share as have Poland, Finland, Ukraine (which has an even higher Opera share), Greece, SwitzerlandA high IE share can be found in France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, UK, Italy, Portugal So the conclusion that IE has no longer a monopoly seems warranted in only a few countries (Simpson Paradox anyone???)

Well you managed to troll and derail your own article, congrats! Does it not worry you that your absolutist position on government intervention to correct market failures seems mainly supported in comments by xenophobes and technical ignoramuses who don't think it's possible to download software without a browser? I mean it doesn't prove anything, but it's kind of a worrying correlation.

Anyway the comment I originally meant to post before reading the depressing thread above:

Where's the articles about IE not being the majority browser anymore? This is an important milestone and one that seems set to continue downward. Combine Mac popularity, mobile browsing coming of age, the growth by minority browsers and a concerted campaign to deprecate IE6 (which seems to on the verge of happening) and it could radically change the face of the web. Why does tech journalism have to concentrate on the simplistic A vs B story to the exclusion of the really interesting trends?

It matters that IE is still on the hardrive for at at least two reasons:

One, security problems in the code can be taken advantage of by viruses and trojans. Why have a high-value target with an entire ecosystem of exploit code writers sitting on your hard-drive if you aren't using it?

Secondly, some 3rd party programs, written when IE had a monopoly launch IE directly rather than "the user's preferred browser", IE then throws a dialogue in your face asking if you want to keep it as your default. Even if the user is smart enough to say no this gives a usability advantage to the incumbent, and naive users who've been switched by their family tech support find themselves inadvertently switched back.

Originally posted by CoreArmour:Well, in most other modern operating systems you can easily remove the web browser that comes with OS.... can't do this with any of the MS produced OS.

Even if this distinction really mattered (honestly, just don't use it), it takes seven clicks in Vista to remove access to IE. So it's still resident on the hard drive - who on earth cares?

When I mean easily remove I mean easily REMOVE completely, not just making the icon disappear.It's about freedom of choice and I(majority of others too) do not want a crappy piece of software taking up valuable harddrive space. Oh and next time before playing the Vista card as You already did, please consider that majority of Windows homeusers still run XP, the percentage is even higher in corporations. Now, where is the point You may ask? Well, I'm not sure about Vista, but in XP, all the updating works through IE, so it is a big problem, even though You don't want to admit it. I will personally send big Thank You note to MS when I can update my XP without IE being present on hd. I think it's safe to say that Windows would be A LOT faster without IE being integrated to work with billion OS gadgets.

Originally posted by CoreArmour:It's about freedom of choice and I(majority of others too) do not want a crappy piece of software taking up valuable harddrive space.

Christ, "valuable harddrive space"? It's come to this? Oh, yeah, I totally see your point. I mean, I was just looking through the system32 directory, and there's all these DLLs there, just taking up valuable harddrive space. So I deleted them; I don't want that Microsoft crap taking up space I could be using for porn.

I love the phrase "playing the Vista card," though. Almost like "playing the race card," eh? Anyway, even in XP (that eight-year-old operating system), you can turn on automatic updates and never have to use IE. I don't think I've visited the Windows Update website through IE in the last 4 years.

I hate to break it to you, but the "majority of others" don't give two hoots whether IE is irrevocably scrubbed from the system or not. And I say this as an Opera user since version 5 who would rather email URLs to some wget cron job (a la Stallman) than use IE. Face it, you've got freedom of choice already. Now you've installed a multi-gigabyte OS and are whinging about your inability to delete one arbitrary bit of it. A stand of high principle, it is not.

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Originally posted by Economics:One, security problems in the code can be taken advantage of by viruses and trojans. Why have a high-value target with an entire ecosystem of exploit code writers sitting on your hard-drive if you aren't using it?

If you're not using it, how's it going to get executed unless some nefarious code is already running with at least user-level permissions? And if you get rid of it, how will the other bits of Windows that rely on an HTML renderer work? Want to use Outlook? Ever want to read a .chm file? No? Face it, an HTML renderer is a pretty vanilla component of a modern OS. You might as well complain that you can't uninstall the file browser.

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Secondly, some 3rd party programs, written when IE had a monopoly launch IE directly rather than "the user's preferred browser", IE then throws a dialogue in your face asking if you want to keep it as your default.

Yeah, forcing me to perform the Herculean task of unchecking the box that says "always check that IE is the default browser" (just like in FF and Opera). Goodness me, we're a bunch of precious snowflakes. Would you rather break all these shittily-written legacy apps than go to the lengths of unchecking a single box?

As a point of interest, the Internet Explorer folder on my machine occupies 4.35MB. A Maxtor DiamondMax 250GB drive currently costs 36GBP on dabs.com, meaning IE's unconscionable residence on my (MY!) disk is costing me approximately 6 tenths of a penny.

Now, I realise these are recessionary times, but I think describing this as "valuable harddrive space" is a bit of a stretch.

Originally posted by Frosty Grin:The very existence of these "legacy apps"is a reason why some kind of action is necessary. We can prevent similar situations by forcing Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows 7.

So we're going to use legislation to force MS to unbundle a component that every other modern OS includes in order to "fix" (read: break) an unimportant edge condition caused by obsolete software that is already solvable with a single mouse click?

StatCounter? Unless their methods were limited to simple request User-Agent analysis, the results are guaranteed to be tainted. That's because StatCounter is exactly the type of site/service that gets blocked first by most people that use the FF NoScript add-on. I love the irony of that. In such a 'study' it could only work against FF.

Originally posted by Dead Badger:So we're going to use legislation to force MS to unbundle a component that every other modern OS includes in order to "fix" (read: break) an unimportant edge condition caused by obsolete software that is already solvable with a single mouse click?

Sounds like a great idea.

1. No, we aren't going to "fix" anything. On the contrary, we are going to prevent this situation from happening in the future. It's about new software, not obsolete software.

And what new software explicitly opens IE, exactly? You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And "in the future"? You mean you think there's a risk software writers are going to go back to explicitly opening links in IE? IE, with its constantly falling market share? Please.

And Windows having a 90% marketshare doesn't justify every ludicrous thought that comes through people's heads. Operating systems come with browsers these days; get over it.

Originally posted by Dead Badger:And what new software explicitly opens IE, exactly? You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And "in the future"? You mean you think there's a risk software writers are going to go back to explicitly opening links in IE? IE, with its constantly falling market share? Please.

Do you have a reason to believe that IE's marketshare will be "constantly falling" in the future? Let's face it, Microsoft has more resources than Mozilla, and the very idea of prevention is based on "trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist".

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And Windows having a 90% marketshare doesn't justify every ludicrous thought that comes through people's heads. Operating systems come with browsers these days; get over it.

I'm sorry, but "get over it" is a pretty stupid argument. I definitely don't think that a 90% marketshare justifies everything, but it means that you can't equate Windows to "every other modern OS". It's in a league of its own.

Do you have a reason to believe that IE's marketshare will be "constantly falling" in the future?

More reason than you have to believe every software developer in the world will suddenly be consumed by an attack of the stupids, and return voluntarily to 2001.

For that matter, how many apps are really getting written in Win32 these days anyway? All the software I've started using in the last few years has been in-browser already (twitter, gmail, google apps, blah blah blah), and no-one needs to pass a law to tell them that other browsers matter. People obsessing about IE are reliving the problems of 10 years ago for no reason. IE's days of dominating internet standards are over, and this is reason for celebration. What more do you really want?

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I'm sorry, but "get over it" is a pretty stupid argument.

It is, unfortunately, pretty much all there is left to say. The vast majority of people when confronted with an OS expect to be able to get online with the minimum of fuss. If given an OS completely without an internet browser, they're going to think they've got something semi-functional. I'm sorry if you think this is stupid, but it is nonetheless the case. Plainly Microsoft's hegemonistic awfulness has not stopped the people of Ukraine from embracing the wonder of Opera, and if backwards former communists* can work out how to find a better browser, can it really be that hard for everyone else?

Where do you draw the line with included programs/utilities and why is the browser so special that it can't be included?

Browsers can be (and has been) used to tie the customer to the particular platform. Even today I run in to online-services that require IE, and using IE requires Windows. Microsoft has done their best to bastardize WWW and related standards, in an attempt to further prop up Windows.

What should be included in the list of apps that should not be bundled? IE and media Player comes to mind. Media Player is being used to prop us MS's media-formats, and since it comes with the OS, it means that they are using their OS to prop up those formats. In other words: MS is using their dominance of the OS-market to gain foothold in an unrelated market (media-formats). That goes against the antitrust-legislation, fair and square.

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It has become pretty obvious that IE's grip on the browser market is slipping away and deservedly so, the browsers gaining market share now (Gecko & Webkit in their various shells) are competing on standards compliance and performance, not stupid gimmicks like the last "Browser War".

The browser-market is a good example of an dysfunctional market, thanks to one player having a monopoly in an unrelated market. For a long time, IE was utterly inferior to Firefox. So why didn't Firefox quickly move to dominate IE? If we look at capabilities and features of the competitors, Firefox was far and away superior. Why is IE still dominating the market? The reason is because of the fact that IE is bundled with the OS, and the OS has a monopoly. What other explanation is there?

If the browser-market functioned properly, IE would have about 10% market-share at this moment. But no, it's still dominating.

Firefox is at 38% in Europe? That's the coolest stat I've seen in the computing industry in a long, long time.

I don't care who's on top so long as there are enough popular browsers to spur competition among browser developers and convince web developers to make standards compliant sites. The current percentages are pretty close to making that scenario a reality.

Finally, the browser market is enjoying healthy competition. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this to the future of computing!

The browser-market is a good example of an dysfunctional market, thanks to one player having a monopoly in an unrelated market. For a long time, IE was utterly inferior to Firefox. So why didn't Firefox quickly move to dominate IE? If we look at capabilities and features of the competitors, Firefox was far and away superior. Why is IE still dominating the market? The reason is because of the fact that IE is bundled with the OS, and the OS has a monopoly. What other explanation is there?

The explanation is quite simple. No conspiracy theories or complicated reasoning is required.

IE was, and still is, popular at least partially because many websites don't work with any other browser.

This is especially true for corporate services websites such as time/attendance systems, expense systems, business analytic systems, web configuration for hardware, screen sharing for audio/video conferencing, document control systems... For home use, some banking websites, tax filing websites, etc. All of these examples are real. They are IE only sites that employees at my company must use, today, in the real world.

As an IT manager, I have to ensure that my users are aware of which sites require which browser. For users incapable of or unwilling to remember which is which, IE as their only browser makes sense.

Argue all you want that FF is superior, but it doesn't matter to users who just want to be able to use websites that are IE only. And yes, I'm a FF user. (Except for various websites that require IE)

Originally posted by Dead Badger:IE's days of dominating internet standards are over, and this is reason for celebration. What more do you really want?

Microsoft should be punished for this behavior - in one way or another.

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The vast majority of people when confronted with an OS expect to be able to get online with the minimum of fuss. If given an OS completely without an internet browser, they're going to think they've got something semi-functional.

That's a big 'if'. I'm pretty sure that OEMs will bundle an internet browser with PCs. They can also bundle two or three different browsers. Alternatively, Microsoft can implement a "Browser Update" program. It will be similar to "Windows Update" (no browser necessary, the minimum of fuss).

In other words, "an OS completely without an internet browser" is a strawman.

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Plainly Microsoft's hegemonistic awfulness has not stopped the people of Ukraine from embracing the wonder of Opera, and if backwards former communists* can work out how to find a better browser, can it really be that hard for everyone else?

Have all Ukrainians embraced "the wonder of Opera"? No, it's a generalization that has no effect on my statements. Even in Ukraine, bundling still affects the market.

Well, since FF autoupdates, and it is only compared to one version of IE, I guess IE is still bigger across all versions.

Being the fanboy I am, I am happy that Opera is finally, on Ars, being recognised. The last numbers I saw had it well past 4% in Europe. And you may say "that's nothing", consider the prevailance of PCs in Europe, 4% of thoose is a damn lot.

With Opera 10 comming out, lets see if the CEO rows across the atlantic this time, we'll see.

/this was a fanboy post. I use Opera, and it's one piece of software I bother to be a fanboy about, which is quite rare.

Since last I visited, they added the ability to control your browser with face gestures. Let's see how long it takes till FF copies that and claim to have invented it (that page has been removed from FF's homepage since /all/ their claims were false, so it's kinda an inside joke).

The problem about IE is that the vast majority of users aren't geek (as opposed to the people who care to even speak about browsers, like here).

I mean, how many parents would use Firefox if their children hadn't install it on their computers and told them to use it? I know it's a big generalization, but still, it applies.

Those people don't care about Web standards, they just want it to work on all websites. As dfiler rightfully pointed out, some websites are IE specific. It is very sad, and MS is playing this card, since they know about what I stated before (people don't care about how it works, they want it to work).

I also agree that it was a very lame move to make using IE mandatory for any other stuff than browsing in Windows, but that is part of this strategy. I mean, if everytime that a given better technology emerged it remplaced the old one, we would live in a tech dream world, wich isn't the case, because logic doesn't prevail, money and corporations do...

Originally posted by segphault:Can you name any modern operating system that doesn't bundle a web browser?

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and (I think as I've never used it) NetBSD.

Sure they have browsers in the ports, but that isn't part of the Operating System. OpenBSD makes that exceptionally clear ... . I suppose if one counts Lynx ...

I don't think MS could make the OS work without HTML rendering so IE's engine has to be in there somewhere (even if you delete Safari, Webkit is still in MacOS somewhere). I think removing the icon is good enough.